Homemade Landscape Lighting

Homemade Landscape Lighting

No heat problems. Obviously they were landscape lights so were cooled by natural forces. Low voltage marine lights seldom set boats or racing yachts on fire. I haven't heard of many auto fires caused by the low voltage wiring torching the car. Yeah sure, stupid people blowing frozen batteries with jumper cables pos/neg to pos/neg batteries can end up in trouble. I guess a 12v spark near gas fumes could set something on fire. Lighters work.

If you go LED, pricey, it would be hard to even be able to measure the heat output?

My custom fixtures were certainly nicer than the plastic Chinese crap ones that come with 600 fixtures, 40,000 feet of wiring, and a transformer at Lower than Lowe's or Home Desperate this time of year.

By the way? Big Lots (and I suspect other product liquidators online) will be carrying those kits from last year again soon. I found buying the kits---especially at the end of season--- and saving the basic bulbs and sockets, trying the transformer with respect to the watts it supported and getting that much wiring not a bad deal at times. Big Lots sells them for like $20-30. Toss the tacky plastic fixtures away and build your own?

I remember one year in California Cost Plus (World Market now here in the Midwest?), Pier One or somebody like them had these really nice brass lanterns with glass on sale for chimp change. They were oil burning but I cut the little burners out, fitted the sockets and bulbs from a closeout sale like mentioned, strung thinner low voltage wire I would need than if I were burying it, hooked it to the cheap voltage converter with photoelectric eye and had people thinking they liked the look. Made for a more than inviting screen porch.

In addition to making my own outdoor fixtures out of wood? The concrete and resin Chinese style lanterns were popular with people. Same deal. Sockets bulbs from marine or auto stores. Until the landscape kits came out and were carried by the resellers.

Just sourced some low voltage LED firefly/twinkle lights for a person asking for help in another post. I knew they must exist and indeed they do with a controller to change effects. Landscape lighting is the one thing people forget to play with in defining their homes. It is not expensive to add some touches that make your place look nice, even at night.

I had to leave Central Illinois though. I was growing too attached to lawn ornaments and would soon have lit them all to blink as cows pissed on lawns or as faded plastic deer fawns with red eyes got caught in the lights. And then there was my friend, a librarian, who so hated Victorian gazing balls her friends started giving her bowling balls. She has them all now, in her front yard. With landscape lighting? People would drive to see the collection. Imagine hundreds, maybe thousands of bowling balls on pedestals.

Homemade Landscape Lighting

I'd stay away from the HD/Lowes landscape lights. You may pay more at a lighting store, but for the most part you'll get a better product. You could also go to a lighting store select some and see if you can get that model/manufacturer online cheaper. I would make one and then take it to a local electrician and see if he thinks it's safe, or can be made more safe. Low voltage is also a better way to go, it's easier and has less restrictions than line voltage.